A year of not speaking to Joseph.
Saturday, 05.29.10 - 7:14 pm.

I've been writing this for over a month. Today or tomorrow -can't remember well and I'm not going to check- marks one year since I stopped talking to Joseph. I'm happy and very sad about it. Such is life.

***

Joseph holds a lot of resentment towards me. I haven't asked exactly why, but I think it has to do with the fact that I, apparently, moved on "quickly" and "without caring much". A rather strange remark when you take in consideration that even before he broke up with me he was already living with another girl, whom he married months later and went on to have a child with.

I get a lot of pats in the back from friends, who say I've done incredible well after this thing he pulled. But they know I am not ok, emotionally. I have made progress but I still cry and hurt like it's 2008. He isn't a scar, he is a fresh, infected wound. Sometimes it still feels like it was last week that he dumped me, continued contacting me and told me about the girl he was so hung up on that he married and got knocked-up. It's like everything happened in one day and that day was a few days ago. I'm crying as I type this because it hurts the same.

We were together for four years and a half. I made a lot of mistakes: I was a very overprotected, neurotic, study-driven little girl. I never went out with him other than to eat or to the movies, and never past 10-11 pm. I thought a lot about our future together but never did much about the present. I was stressed by the psychology career that took most of my time and had me living in campus, which is where we'd meet most of the times. I never had a pet name for him, I barely called him by his name (thought I did this with most people and I realized this relatively recently). I was very reluctant to spend a lot of money because when I was earning something, it wasn't much and I wanted to save; the rest came from my dad. I was terrible at sex and I never filled my mouth with all those words he'd constantly say, like he was madly in love with me and I was the love of his life. I felt the same way and I'd tell him such things, just not as often as he did. I didn't speak much, and given my temper, my lack of experience in life, the fact that I took him for granted (another mistake) and the circumstances at that time, I didn't show it much either. It came off as me hanging tightly on to a secure routine.

If Joseph came to tell me all that and more, I wouldn't fight it off. I am very well aware of those mistakes and I'm done feeling guilty about them, because I assure you 100% that I did the best I could, and that I was in love with him, fiercely. I know he made mistakes, too, and some traits in him scared me, but in general he was quite all right to me. Perhaps the kind of pushing he was giving me to come out of my shell wasn't the kind of push I needed at the time. That's not his fault nor mine.

So he complains about me. I understand my mistakes but I also tried my hardest to never leave him alone. I know that wasn't enough because we didn't have fun together, as in going on trips or such...but I always tried to be there for him. I was with him when he had that ugly fight with his dad, when his dad was so sick that he cried, when he came back urgently from Guatemala wearing shoes that were not his, when his cat Waffles ripped open her stomach when she got stuck in razor wire. I lent him money. I stayed by his side the days he'd spend playing on the computer, not knowing whether to pressure him into finding a job at the risk of being told "you sound just like my mother" or to give him his space and trush he'd gather the strenght to do it himself eventually.

I insisted he found a job, he took a career...I didn't insist THAT much, though, because after all he was grown-up. And I didn't care for having a lot of money or status. I was just so interested in keeping him for the rest of my life that I wanted to make sure he was going to be my wingman, a partner I could rely on, when we decided to live an adult life.

I'm at this stage in which I just want to hit him so hard until all that shit he has in his brain comes out, and realizes the harm he's done to me. He destroyed me, and continues to destroy me to this day, because the consequences of his choices still haunt me and I think about him everyday. I am not around him, except when he needs to justify all the hurt he caused on someone who loved him so much. He thinks I deserved getting screwed like that, doesn't he? For all the mistakes I made.

And he'd laugh if he knew I'm still devastated, he'd ask where all that energy was when we were together. It was always there. Not in the form of passionate love-making in public places, not in the way of dramatic arguments that would leave us scratched. I wasn't too emotional, I'd rather take my time and stop to think things through. He said he loved me because I was different from other girls. I guess he stopped loving me for the same reason.

He betrayed me. He was quick to replace me. I don't think he hesitated in giving his then girlfriend my e-mail so they both could later joke about my reactions. I was aware of what I was doing when I wrote him "I wanted you to wear a condom with me because I didn't know if you'd worn one when you were with the other girls". During our relationship, I never thought he was cheating on me (perhaps another "proof" that I didn't love him that much: I wasn't very jealous; true, but do you measure love in terms of jealousy or in terms of trust?). When I realized he had broken up with me and he was with someone else, I started to doubt everything about him. What else could he have possibly done behind my back? And if it wasn't true that he cheated on me (I like to think he didn't, although I have three people who insist he did), at least he wasn't getting away with destroying me without me kicking him once.

It's pretty nasty having to fight with him in my head everyday. But look, this is probably the first week since October 2008 that I'm actually pissed off at him. I'm furious. And anger is only the second of five stages of grief. You do realize, then, how long have I been stuck in the first one, alternating with exaggerated sadness. It's excruciating. And he washes his hands off this: he thinks I'm doing great, that I moved on. He's wrong. But if he knew how I really am, he'd think I'm weak, perhaps just being melodramatic.

I can't win with him, can I? I'm the villain. Because he chooses to think so. In spite of all my mistakes, he left me because he wanted to leave me; I could have made only one third of all the mistakes I made and he still would have left me, because there was something better than me waiting for him. But responsibility isn't a well-developed asset in him, so it doesn't surprise that the burden of his most hurtful choices rely on me. Blame the victim; you hurt the ones you despise, but you also despise the ones you hurt. It's the only way he could justify all the harm he caused me.

So, yeah, right now I would love to get in a fight with him. I'd yell a bit, I'd throw a few punches and kicks. I'd lose, I suppose, but I wouldn't care. It's not like he hasn't topped himself making me feel like shit. I just feel this way because I'm only recently coming out of my shock. Because all these months, this year and a half, I've been in shock. Someone unexpectedly cornered me and started beating me with a belt. I did not see that coming and I could only think of getting away and protecting myself.

Then it was licking the wounds and wondering what I did to deserve such treatment. To hear pretty things for four years and a half and then come to witness all this mess...it's just cruelty, man. It nearly left me heartless. I had this constant pit in my stomach and my appetite never fully recovered.

I was in love with him, I fucking swear to God, I loved him so much. And he knew it. He knew it very well and now he wants to doubt it, like I was the one who betrayed our commitment as a couple. Like I was the one who dumped him for somebody else.

Of course I'm not in the same place where he left me. I did my best to not get stuck. I changed my ways, most of the times thinking he would look at my new accomplishments and be proud of me and think I was finally worth of him. And when I realized he and I different styles of loving, I just wanted to go running to him and tell him that I had figured it out, that now I knew how to love him better and show it.

But when I knocked on his door, with a muffin in hand, he came out and closed it behind him, like there was someone else inside. There was. I was too late and you know the rest of the story.

And after a while I realized he actually couldn't care less about me, he got busy with his brand-new life and he is better off without me, with somebody else. I wasn't very vocal on my feelings for him; he resented that but I was hoping my loyalty for him through the years would speak for me. I suppose it still will. With him gone, I lost my home. A part of me was mutilated and I have found a way to walk with a missing limb; this, they say, made me stronger. I am. I am a good person now. He suspects nothing.

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